December 2013

December 23, 2013

Wiley Rein is defending its request for $2 million in legal fees from the federal government after winning a constitutional challenge to the federal Voting Rights Act.

The U.S. Department of Justice has opposed the fee request, arguing Wiley Rein's client, Shelby County, Ala., didn't bring the type of claims covered under the voting rights law's fee-shifting provision. On Dec. 20, Wiley Rein filed
court papers that accused the government of trying to relitigate issues the U.S. Supreme Court decided.

"[N]either their antipathy toward the rights Shelby County restored to the citizens of formerly covered jurisdictions nor the slew of other objections they raise can defeat Shelby County’s proper claim for attorney’s fees," firm founding partner Bert Rein wrote.

Surveillance: The National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records is bound for review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit—just as the court is set to undergo significant change. Zoe Tillman reports. Also, Judge Richard Leon has never been one to mince words.

Fireworks: As the U.S. Supreme Court begins a monthlong holiday recess, court watchers await the unwrapping of decisions in some of the term's hot-button cases. Marcia Coyle takes a look at the big rulings lawyers are still waiting for from the high court in 2014.

DOJ in 2014: Prison reform, the protection of civil liberties and the fight against fraud are among the top management challenges that face the U.S. Department of Justice in the new year, according to the department's inspector general. Todd Ruger reports.

NSA Reforms: President Barack Obama said Friday that he would look over the National Security Agency's surveillance activities during the holidays and would make a "pretty definitive statement" in January about potential reforms, The Washington Post reports. Speaking at a year-end news conference, Obama said that "just because we can do something doesn't mean we should."

IRS Head: The Senate on Friday confirmed John Koskinen to lead the Internal Revenue Service, POLITICO reports. He was the non-executive chairman of Freddie Mac from 2008 to 2011. The IRS hasn't had a permanent head in more than a year.

New Judge: The Senate on Friday also confirmed Brian Davis as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Davis, a Nassau County circuit judge, was first nominated for the federal judgeship in February 2012.

An Occupy D.C. protester who claims he was unconstitutionally arrested for using profanity can proceed with his claims, a Washington federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson yesterday
denied the government’s bid to dismiss claims against three U.S. Park Police officers. Based on facts alleged in the complaint, the judge said no officer would have reasonably found probable cause to arrest the protester, Anthony Michael Patterson, for disorderly conduct.

Jackson highlighted the First Amendment's protection of profanity. She said there was no evidence in Patterson's complaint that his speech risked provoking violence—one of the standards spelled out in the D.C. Code for disorderly conduct arrests.

A major auto lender will pay nearly $100 million to settle charges by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Department of Justice that it unintentionally discriminated against minority borrowers, charging them more for loans than white applicants with comparable credit.

In the federal government's largest auto loan discrimination settlement to date, Ally Financial Inc. and Ally Bank will pay $80 million to consumers in restitution, as well as an additional $18 million civil penalty. According to the government, Ally overcharged more than 235,000 black, Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander consumers by an average of $200 to $300 for loans issued between April 2011 and December 2013.

But the lender - which was formerly known as GMAC Inc. and received a $17.2 billion bailout from the Treasury Department during the financial crisis - didn’t do it on purpose, the government admits.

Tanya Chutkan, a partner in the Washington office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, is President Barack Obama's latest pick to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Chutkan was one of eight U.S. district court nominees the White House announced late yesterday. The president also named two nominees to federal appellate courts.

An attorney at Boies Schiller since 2002, Chutkan's practice specializes in antitrust class actions and other complex litigation. She was part of the legal team that won a $162 million judgment earlier this year in a price-fixing class action against Chinese manufacturers of Vitamin C. Her practice also includes white-collar defense.

Legalized: New Mexico became the 17th state to allow same-sex marriage. The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously concluded the equal-protection clause of the state constitution guarantees marriage rights for gay couples. Read the ruling here.

Shelved: "Five years after Wall Street set off a worldwide economic panic, the S.E.C.’s legal deadline for filing crisis-era cases is expiring," The New York Times reports. The Times examines enforcement decisions--and internal disharmony--at the agency. The tension at the agency, according to the report, "raises questions about whether the agency, even while winning some big cases, could have done more after the crisis to hold Wall Street accountable."

Disclosed: A UCLA law professor has won a partial victory in his quest to obtain State Bar data on the racial makeup of bar exam test takers," The Recorder reports. The California Supreme Court said the public has a legitimate interest in the data. Coverage here in the Los Angeles Times.

December 19, 2013

Citing "systemic misconduct at every stage of the mortgage servicing process," the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 49 states and the District of Columbia will require one of the country's largest mortgage loan servicers to provide $2.1 billion in relief to struggling homeowners.

Atlanta-based Ocwen Financial Corp. agreed to provide $2 billion in loan modification relief to its customers through principal reduction, plus another $127.3 million in refunds to foreclosure victims.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray called the deal "a landmark" for the agency, which worked with regulators in every state but Oklahoma to craft the settlement. The consent judgment is still subject to approval by a judge in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where the complaint was filed.

The prison terms of eight drug offenders who were sentenced "under an unfair system" were commuted today, President Barack Obama said.

"If they had been sentenced under the current law, many of them would have already served their time and paid their debt to society," Obama said in a written statement Thursday afternoon, citing the Fair Sentencing Act he signed in 2011. "Instead, because of a disparity in the law that is now recognized as unjust, they remain in prison, separated from their families and their communities, at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars each year."

The president commuted the life sentence of Clarence Aaron of Mobile, Ala., whose term is now set to expire in April 2014. Aaron was sentenced in 1993 in the Southern District of Alabama on conspiracy and possession charges. Propublica and The Washington Post spotlighted Aaron's case in May 2012.

"Each of them has served more than 15 years in prison," Obama said today. "In several cases, the sentencing judges expressed frustration that the law at the time did not allow them to issue punishments that more appropriately fit the crime."